Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Clarence Darrow
The law is only the slightest bit more intelligent. No matter who does it, or what it is, the individual is
responsible. If he is manifestly and obviously crazy they may make some distinction; but no lawyer is
wise enough to look into the human mind and know what it means. The interpretations of the human
judges were delivered before we had any science on the subject whatever, and they continue to enforce
the old ideas of insanity, in spite of the fact that there isn't an intelligent human being in the world who
has studied the question who ever thinks of it in legal terms. Judges instruct the jury that if a man
knows the difference between right and wrong he cannot be considered insane. And yet an insane man
knows the difference better than an intelligent man, because he has not the intelligence and the learning
to know that this is one of the hardest things to determine, and perhaps the most impossible. You can
ask the inmates of any insane asylum whether it is right to steal, lie, or kill, and they will all say "No,"
just as little children will say it, because they have been taught it. It furnishes no test, but still lawyers
and Judges persist in it, to give themselves an excuse to wreak vengeance upon unfortunate people.
Housman knew better. He knew that in every human being is the imprint of all that has gone before,
especially the imprint of his direct ancestors. And not only that, but that it is the imprint of all the
environment in which he has lived, and that human responsibility is utterly unscientific, and besides
that, horribly cruel.
Another thing that impressed itself upon all these poets alike was the futility of life. I don't know
whether a college succeeds in making pupils think that they are very important in the scheme of the
universe. I used to be taught that we were all very important. Most all the boys and girls who were
taught it when I was taught it are dead, and the world is going on just the same. I have a sort of feeling
that after I am dead it will go on just the same, and there are quite a considerable number of people
who think it will go on better. But it won't; I haven't been important enough even to harm it. It will go
on just exactly the same.
We are always told of the importance of the human being and the importance of everything he does;
the importance of his not enjoying life, because if he is happy here of course he can't be happy
hereafter, and if he is miserable here he must be happy hereafter. Omar made short work of that, of
those promises which are not underwritten, at least not by any responsible people. He did not believe in
foregoing what little there is of life in the hope of having a better time hereafter.
He says, "Ah, take the Cash and let the Credit go." Good advice that: "Ah, take the Cash and let the
Credit go." If you take the "Credit," likely as not you will miss your fun both here and hereafter. Omar
knew better.
It is strange how the religious creeds have hammered that idea into the human mind. They have always
felt there was a kinship between pleasure and sin. A smile on the face is complete evidence of
wickedness. A solemn, uninteresting countenance is a stamp of virtue and goodness, of self-denial, that
will surely be rewarded. Of course, the religious people are strangely hedonistic without knowing it!
There are some of us who think that the goodness or badness of an act in this world can be determined
only by pain and pleasure units. The thing that brings pleasure is good, and the thing that brings pain is
bad. There is no other way to determine the difference between good and bad. Some of us think so: I
think so.
Of coarse, the other class roll their eyes and declaim against this heathen philosophy, the idea that pain
and pleasure have anything to do with the worth-whileness of existence. It isn't important for you to be
happy here. But why not? You are too miserable here so you will be happy hereafter; and the hereafter
is long and the here is short. They promise a much bigger prize than the pagan for the reward of
conduct. They simply want you to trust them. They take the pain and pleasure theory with a vengeance,
but they do business purely on credit. They are dealers in futures! I could never understand, if it was
admissible to have joy in heaven, why you couldn't have it here, too. And if joy is admissible at all, the
quicker you get at it the better, and the surer you are of the result. Omar thought that: "Ah, take the
Cash, and let the Credit go!" Take the Cash and let the other fellow have the Credit! That was his
philosophy, and I insist it is much better, and more intelligent philosophy than the other.
But Omar had no delusions about how important this human being is. He had no delusions about the
mind, about man's greatness. He knew something about philosophy or metaphysics, whatever it is. He
knew the uncertainty of human calculations, no matter who arrived at them. He knew the round-about
way that people try to find out something, and he knew the results. He knew the futility of all of it.
Myself When young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went.
That is what Omar thought. Man evermore came out by the same door where in he went. Therefore,
"take the Cash and let the Credit go!"' He put it even stronger than this. He knew exactly what these
values were worth, if anything. He knew what a little bit there is to the whole bag of tricks. What's the
difference whether you were born 75 years ago, or fifty or twenty-five? what's the difference whether
you are going to live ten years, or twenty or thirty, or weather you are already dead? In that case you
escape something! This magnifying the importance of the human being is one of the chief sins of man
and results in all kinds of cruelty.
If we took the human race for what it is worth, we could not be so cruel. Omar Khayyam knew what it
was, this life, that we talk so much about:
'Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Forrash
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.
"Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest" -- is there anything else, if one could just make a survey
of the human being, passing across the stage of life? I suppose man has been upon the earth for over a
million years. A million years, and perhaps his generations may be thirty to thirty-five years long.
Think of the generations in a thousand years, in 5,000 years, in a hundred thousand, in a million years!
There are a billion and a half of these important organisms on the earth at any one time. All of them,
all important -- kings, priests and professors, and doctors and lawyers and presidents, and 100 per cent
Americans, and everything on earth you could think of -- Ku Kluxers, W.C.T.U.'s, Knights of
Columbus and Masons, everything. All of them important in this scheme of things! All of them
seeking to attract attention to themselves, and not even satisfied when they get it!
What is it all about? it is strange what little things will interest the human mind -- baseball games,
fluctuations of the stock market, revivals, foot races, hangings, Anything will interest them. And the
wonderful importance of the human being!
Housman knew the importance just as well as Omar. He has something to say about it, too. He knew it
was just practically nothing. Strangely like him! The little affairs of life, the little foolishnesses of life,
the things that consume our lives without any result whatever; he knew them and knew what they were
worth. He knew they were worth practically nothing. But we do them; the urge of living keeps us
doing them, even when we know how useless and foolish they are. Housman understood them:
Yonder see the morning blink:
The sun is up, and up must I.
To wash and dress and eat and drink
And look at things and talk and think
And work, and God knows why.
Oh often have I washed and dressed
And what's to show for all my pain?
Let me lie abed and rest:
Ten thousand times I've done my best
And all's to do again.
That is what life is, rising in the morning and washing and dressing and going to recitations and
studying and forgetting it, and then going to bed at night, to get up the next morning and wash and
dress and go to recitation, and so on, world without end.
One might get a focus on it from the flies. They are very busy buzzing round. You don't exactly know
what they are saying, because we can't understand fly language. Professors can't teach you fly
language! We can't tell what they are saying, but they are probably talking about the importance of
being good, about what's going to happen to their souls and, when. And when they are stiff in the
morning in the Autumn and can hardly move round, the housewife gets up and builds the fire, and the
heat limbers them up. She sets out the bread and butter on the table. The flies come down and get into
it, and they think the housewife is working for them. Why not?
Is there any difference? Only in the length of the agony. What other? Apparently they have a good
time while the sun is shining, and apparently they die when they get cold. It is a proposition of life and
death, forms of matter clothed with what seems to be consciousness, and then going back again into
inert matter, and that is all. There isn't any manifestation that we humans make that we do not see in
flies and in other forms of matter.
Housman understands it; they have all understood it. Read any of the great authors of the world -- any
of them; their hopes and their fears and their queries and their doubt, are, about the same. There is only
one man I know of that can answer everything, and that is Dr Cadman.
Housman saw it. He knew a little of the difference between age and youth -- and there is some. The
trouble is, the old men always write the books; they write them not in the way they felt when they were
young, but in the way they feel now. And they preach to the young, and condemn them for dN+Zc
what they themselves did when they had the emotion to do it. Great teachers, when they grow old!
Perhaps it is partly envy and the desire that no one shall have anything they can't have. Likely it is, but
they don't know it. Housman says something about this:
When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse hid I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.
Now times are altered: if I care
To bay a thing I can;
The pence are here and here's the fair,
But where's the lost young man?
The world is somewhat different. The lost young man was once looking at the fair. He couldn't go in,
and he liked it more for that; but now he is tired of the fair and tired of the baubles that once amused
him and the riddles he once tried to guess, and he can't understand that the young man still likes to go
to the fair.
We hear a great deal said by the ignorant about the wickedness of the youth of today. Well, I don't
know: some of us were wicked when we were young. I don't know what is the matter with the youth of
today having their fling. I don't know that they are any wickeder today. First, I don't know what the
word wicked moans. Oh, I do know what it means: It means unconventional conduct. But I don't know
whether unconventional conduct is wicked in the sense they mean it is wicked, or whether
conventional conduct is good in the sense they mean it is good. Nobody else knows!
But I remember when I was a boy -- it was a long time ago -- I used to hear my mother complain. My
mother would have been pretty nearly 125 years old if she had kept on living, but luckily for her she
didn't! I used to hear her complain of how much worse the girls were that she knew than the girls were
when she was a girl. Of course, she didn't furnish any bill of particulars; she didn't specify, except not
hanging up their clothes, and gadding, and things like that. But at any rate, they were worse. And my
father used to tell about it, and I have an idea that Adam and Eve used to talk the same fool way.
The truth is, the world doesn't change, or the generations of men or the human emotions. But the
individual changes as he grows old. You hear about the Revolt of Youth. Some people are pleased at it
and some displeased. Some see fine reasons for hope in what they call the youth movement. They can
put it over on the old people, but not on the youth! There is a Revolt of Youth.
Well, youth has always been in revolt. The greatest trouble with youth is that it gets old. Age changes
it. It doesn't bring wisdom, though most old people think because they are old they have wisdom. But
you can't get wisdom by simply growing old. You can even forget it that way! Age means that the
blood runs slow, that the emotions are not as strong, that you play safer, that you stay closer to the
hearth. You don't try to find new continents or even explore old ones. You don't travel into unbeaten
wilderness and lay out new roads. You stick to the old roads when you go out at all.
The world can't go on with old people. It takes young ones that are daring, with courage and faith.
The difference between youth and old age is the same in every generation. The viewpoint is in growing
old, that is all. But the old never seem wise enough to know it, and forever the old have been preaching
to the young. Luckily, however, the young pay very little attention to it. They sometimes pretend to,
but they never do pay much attention to it. Otherwise, life could not exist.
Both of these poets saw the futility of life: the little things of which it is made, scarcely worth the
while. It is all right to talk about futility. We all know it, if we know much of anything. We know life
is futile. A man who considers that his life is of very wonderful importance is awfully close to a
padded cell. Let anybody study the ordinary, everyday details of life; see how closely he is bound and
fettered; see how little it all amounts to.
There are a billion and a half people in the world, all of them trying to shout loud enough to be heard
all at once, so as to attract the attention of the public, so they may be happy. A billion and a half of
them, and if they all attracted attention none of them would have attention! Of course, attention is only
valuable if the particular individual attracts it and nobody, else can get it. That is what makes
presidents and kings -- they get it and nobody else.
Then when you consider that it is all made up of little things, what is life all about, anyway? We do
keep on living. It is easy enough to demonstrate to people who think that life is not worth while. We
could do it easier if we could only settle what worth while means. But if we settle it and convince
ourselves that it is not worth while, we still keep on living. life does not come from willing; rather it
does not come from thought and reason. I don't live because I think it is worth while; I live because I
am a going concern, and every going concern tries to keep on going, I don't care whether it is a tree, or
a plant, or what we call a lower animal, or man, or the Socialist party. Anything that is going tries to
go on by its own momentum, and it does just keep on going -- it is what Schopenhauer called the 'will
to live.' So we must assume that we will live anyhow as long as we can. When the machine runs down
we don't have to worry about it any longer.
Hotisman asked himself this question, and Omar asked himself this question. Life is of little value.
What are we going to do while we live? In other words, what is the purpose, if we can use the word
purpose in this way, which is an incorrect way? What purpose are we going to put into it? Why should
we live; and if we must live, then what? Omar tells us what. He knew there was just one thing
important; he knew what most thinkers know today. He put it differently -- he and FitzGerald together.
It is a balance between painful and pleasurable emotions. Every organized being looks for pleasurable
emotions and tries to avoid painful ones. The seed planted in the ground seeks the light. The instinct of
everything is to move away from pain and toward pleasure. Human beings are just like all the rest. The
earth and all its manifestations are simply that. Omar figured it out, and after philosophizing and
finding that he ever came out the same door where in he went, he said:
You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
That is one way of forgetting life -- one way of seeking pleasurable emotions: "I took the Daughter of
the Vine to Spouse." A way that has been fairly popular down through the ages! Even in spite of the
worst that all the fanatics could possibly do, it has been a fairly universal remedy for the ills of man. It
would be perfect If it were not for the day after!
He says in his wild exuberance:
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-Garment of Repentance fling;
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter -- and the Bird is on the Wing.
There isn't much of it; but while it is fluttering, help it. It has but a little way to flutter, and it is on the
wing!
To those who are not quite so strenuous, there is an appeal more to beauty, a somewhat more
permanent although not much more, but a more beautiful conception of pleasure, which is all he could
get:
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise now!
Well, if you get the right jug and the right book and the rest of the paraphernalia, it isn't so bad!
It is strange that two so different human beings have sought about the same thing. This physical
emotional life that we hear so much about is the only life we know anything about. They sought their
exaltation there, and Omar Khayyam pictured it very well. Housman again does as well. What does he
say about the way to spend life and about life?
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore, years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
What else is there? So while the light is still on and while I can still go, and when the cherry is in
bloom -- I will go to see the cherries hung with snow.
That is the whole philosophy of life for those who think; that is all there is to it, and it is what
everybody is trying to do, without fully realizing it. Many are taking the Credit and letting the Cash go.
Housman is right about that.
Since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
That is why I have so little patience with the old preaching to the young. If youth, with its quick-
flowing blood, its strong imagination, its virile feeling; if youth, with its dreams and its hopes and
ambitions, can go about the woodland to see the cherry hung with snow, why not? Who are the
croakers, who have run their race and lived their time, who are they to keep back expression and hope
and youth and joy from a world that is almost barren at the best?
It has been youth that has kept the world alive; it will be, because from the others emotion has fled;
and with the fleeing of emotion, through the ossification of the brain, all there is left for them to do is
to preach. I hope they have a good time doing that, and I am so glad the young pay no attention to it!
Of course, Housman and Omar and the rest of us are called pessimist's. It is a horrible name. What is a
pessimist, anyway? It is a man or a woman who looks at life as life is. If you could, you might take
your choice, perhaps, as to being a pessimist or a pipe dreamer. But you can't have it, because you look
at the world according to the way you are made. Those are the two extremes. The pessimist takes life
for what life is: not all sorrow, not all pain, not all beauty, not all good. Life is not black; life is not
orange, red, or green, or all the colors of the rainbow. Life is no one shade or hue.
It is well enough to understand it. If pessimism could come as the result of thought, I would think a
pessimist was a wise man. What is an optimist, anyway? He reminds "Me of a little boy running
through the woods and looking up at the sky and not paying any attention to the brambles or thorns he
is scrambling through. There is a stone in front of him and he trips over the stone. Browning said,
"God's in his heaven and all's right with the world." Others say, "God is love, love is God," and so on.
A man who thinks that is bound to be an optimist. He believes that things are good.
The pessimist doesn't necessarily think that everything is bad, but he looks for the worst. He knows it
will come sooner or later. When an optimist falls, he falls a long way; when a pessimist falls it is a
very short fall. When an optimist is disappointed he is very, very sad, because he believed it was the
best of all possible worlds, and God's in his heaven and all's well with the world. When a pessimist is
disappointed he is happy, for he wasn't looking for anything.
This is the safest and by all odds it is the wisest outlook. Housman has put it in a little poem. It is about
the last thing I shall give you. Housman is the only man I know of who has written a poem about
pessimism. Nearly all the people who are talking about pessimism talk in prose; it is very prosy. Poems
are generally written about optimism:
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
Those are the sort of poems. Of course there have been poems written about pessimism. Poetry is
really, to my way of thinking, good only if it is beauty and if it is music.
I don't mean tonight to discuss the question of free verse and poetry, or the comparative merits of the
two styles, or of prose, but I do think that poetry is an exaltation and that you can't hold it for long.
Poetry ought to have beauty and it ought to have music. It should have both. You can be the poet of
sadness; sadness lends itself to poetry as much as gladness, although few poets know how to use it.
Listen to this from Housman:
With rue my heart is laden;
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leading
The lightfoot boys are laid,
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where raises fade.
That is sad, isn't it? But it is beautiful.
I remember once, years and years ago, reading Olive Schreiner's Story of an African farm, in which
she describes the simple Boers of South Africa, with their sorrows and their pleasures. She used this
expression: which it took me some time to understand, in describing pain and pleasure: "There is a
depth of emotion so broad and deep that pain and pleasure are the same." They are the same, and I
think they find their meeting in beauty. The beauty, even if it is painful, is still beauty. You find the
meeting of pain and pleasure, and you can hardly distinguish between the two emotions.
Housman knew it; he knew how to do it. Here is his idea of the young lad who dies: not passes on --
passes off. He dies:
Now hollow fires burn out to black
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.
Oh never fear man, nought's to dread,
Look not left or right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.
Does it bring you painful or pleasurable emotions? It is beautiful; it is profound; it is deep. To me the
painful and pleasurable are blended in the beauty, and I think the two may be one.
Housman, as I have said, is the only one I know who wrote a poem of pessimism; and this, like all of
his, is very short, and I will read it. Somebody else may have written one; but Housman carries the
philosophy of pessimism into poetry, perhaps the philosophy that I have given you. This poem is
supposed to be introduced by somebody who complains of Housman's dark, almost tragical verses. For
in every line that he ever wrote there is no let down. He is like Hardy; he never hauled down the flag.
Life to him was what he saw; what the world saw meant nothing. This was the view in all of
Housman's work. In all of his work there is not one false note; and when I say a false note I mean one
that is not in tune with the rest. This is his idea of pessimism in poetry:
"Terence this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near.
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet.
And nothing now, remained to do
But begin the game anew.
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than Ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure.
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul" is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.
"Luck's a chance but trouble's sure." The moral of it is to "train for ill and not for good."
If I had my choice, I would not like to be an optimist, even assuming that people did not know that I
was an idiot. I wouldn't want to be an optimist because when I fell I would fall such a terribly long
way. The wise man trains for ill and not for good. He is sure he will need that training, and the other
will take care of itself as it comes along.
Of course, life is not all pleasant: it is filled with tragedy. Housman has told us of it, and Omar
Khayyam tells us of it. No man and no woman can live and forget death. However much they try. it is
there, and it probably should be faced like anything else. Measured time is very short. Life, amongst
other things, is full of futility.
Omar Khayyam understood, and Housman understood. There are other poets that have felt the same
way. Omar Khayyam looked on the shortness of life and understood it. He pictured himself as here for
a brief moment. He loved his friends; he loved companionship; he loved wine. I don't know how much
of it he drank. He talked about it a lot. It might have symbolized more than it really meant to him. It
has been a solace, all down through the ages. Not only that, but it has been the symbol of other things
that mean as much -- the wine of life, the joy of living.